Seán Moran: Kilkenny still All-Ireland favourites – with or without Henry Shefflin

Another All-Ireland heads for Kilkenny. It’s not Ballyhale’s fault but their three most recent finals have been relatively bloodless affairs and in fact the club hurling showpiece has in recent years been a disappointing climax to the championship.

Kilkenny teams, though, frequently dance to their own music on these occasions and as a consequence opponents can look flat-footed.

In a significant postscript, Henry Shefflin told media that he'd be making his mind up on his inter-county future within the next week. He's kept his cards close to his chest but if he decides to go back it will be to a Kilkenny side in unusual circumstances.

Sometimes you don't fully notice things until they're not there. The fact that the county will contest this year's relegation final in Division One A marks the poorest league season for the county since Brian Cody took over in 1998.

What that highlights is a record of extraordinary consistency over 16 years. On eight occasions – half the available silverware – the county has won the spring trophy.

We take it for granted now that triumphing in the league is a ‘good thing’ because of the connection between that success and winning All-Irelands but the picture was a lot more cloudy in the years before Cody arrived.

Look at what happened to the nine league winners prior to 1999: none added even a provincial title, let alone an All-Ireland – allowing that in two cases that wasn’t possible, as Galway in 2000 had no provincial title to win and Limerick in 1997 won the league in October as part of a quickly-abandoned experimental calendar.

Tanking

In fact, six of the nine winning managers were gone by the end of the year and two others a year later without having built on their achievement in the previous season.

It’s valid to point out that the arrival of the calendar-year season in 1997 has also done a lot to forge a link between the two national competitions but the connection has been largely Kilkenny’s creation. During the years in question, only Tipperary in 2001 also achieved a league-championship double.

Kilkenny have done it six times – 2002, ’03, ’06, ’09, ’12 and ’14 – and added another two All-Irelands in years when they reached the league final but lost – to Waterford in 2007 and Dublin four years later. Over such a long period of time, it’s a vivid picture of domination.

It has also developed the profile of the competition, as hurling’s dominant team never takes the spring off to record an acoustic album.

That was clear on Sunday after an under-strength team took a tanking from Tipp in Thurles.

Cody’s immediate reaction was to check if there was still even a remote chance that they’d make the quarter-finals.

“Are we absolutely out of it now? If we aren’t, we want to win it,” he said.

Archive research reveals only one statement of relative indifference towards league elimination, expressed in what is – to the modern ear – peculiar live-and-let-live language, and that was in his first year, while still learning on the job.

“I wouldn’t say I’m fierce disappointed,” he said after a semi-final defeat by Galway. “It was a disappointing way to lose the old game just at the end. But ahh, I’m reasonably happy. We’ve had a good league run, a good old campaign. I’m happy enough.”

There have been just four years since 1998 that the county hasn’t featured in the knock-out stages of the league. In 2000, they were third in Division One B, one place from the semi-finals.

Four years later, an unusual end-of-season structure saw the counties at the top of Divisions One A and One B split out to contest the league trophy and those at the bottom left to fight relegation.

Needing to beat Dublin by 12 points to make the cut, Kilkenny could manage a margin of just nine. But with a final free Henry Shefflin crashed the ball off the crossbar and Tommy Walsh just failed to net the rebound.

“We won the match but we lost the war,” Cody said afterwards.

In 2010, the county came fourth in Division One with the top two contesting the final. In other words, there have been no write-offs.

On a cautionary note, Kilkenny failed to win the All-Ireland in two of the above three years but it’s moot whether that’s coincidence or causation because the figures are much the same for seasons when the league was won and no All-Ireland followed – 2005 and 2013.

Topically, there are also mixed signals for the years in which Kilkenny clubs have won the All-Ireland. In two of them, 2005 and 2010, the Liam MacCarthy Cup went elsewhere later in the year. In 2007, the county beat Limerick in the final.

It could be argued that Ballyhale’s previous All-Irelands had significance in terms of wear-and-tear in that they were followed by cruciate injuries to Henry Shefflin, which proved critical in 2010 but not so much in 2007 when the damage occurred at a stage when the actual final was already well in hand. Again coincidence and causation can’t be differentiated.

Whatever about the lessons of spring, Kilkenny remain favourites for the All-Ireland. As the team changes with time, they simply adapt to current circumstances.

Up until 2012 none of Kilkenny’s All-Irelands had been won from the qualifiers. Even relegation finals, which the county will now definitely contest, aren’t without their reassurances.

Mantra

Two years ago Clare beat Cork to secure Division One status and five months later won the All-Ireland.

One man who certainly wasn’t reading much into the weekend’s result was Tipperary manager Eamon O’Shea.

“That’s no more and no less, we got a win today, which is very good but as I keep saying, the same mantra, win or lose it’s a game in March. Take it for what it is.

“We won the game; sometimes we lose games. That has no bearing on what’s going to come in any month following this. Just be cautious.”

Very cautious.

smoran@irishtimes.com